Transportation inspiration

Portland’s flashy new carsharing service is having technical difficulties in northwest Portland.

A cell tower disruption in the Pearl District last week has knocked out much of Car2go’s service in the area surrounding its own office, roughly between Lovejoy and Burnside, Interstate 405 and the Willamette River, spokeswoman Katie Stafford said Tuesday.

If Car2go members try to start or finish a trip in the area, they may find themselves unable to open the car – or unable to end their trip, for which they’re paying 35 cents a minute. This is because, unlike Zipcar, Car2go vehicles must communicate with their central network at each end of every trip.

Stafford said any Car2go users struggling to end a trip should turn their car off and on again, then park in a slightly different space. If that doesn’t work, she said, call the company’s 24/7 call center at 877-488-4224 and ask for the car to be turned off remotely. (This process uses a separate, backup network.) She also said the company would reimburse any minutes wasted due to a bad connection, and had also been offering extra free minutes as an apology.

Stafford said she didn’t have or couldn’t release information about the number of complaints received. Because the company doesn’t have a software system for tracking spikes in phone complaints from a certain area, it’s not clear whether Car2go has identified all its local trouble spots.

But Portland’s 8-person team and Car2go’s Iowa-based call center are focused on finding and resolving any connectivity problems they detect, Stafford said.

“It’s a topic that we talk about every single day that it’s happening,” she said. “We’re going to get this fixed.”

Stafford attributed the problem to a combination of routine cell tower trouble and the company’s still-limited knowledge of the local cell network.

“Most people who are the early adopters do understand that these things happen,” Stafford added, saying that the company thinks its benefits outweigh its occasional problems. “The same way you have problems with your cell phone. … These cars are, like, little apps on wheels.”